Autobiographical Flashback to Tumor 1 - in Memoriam of a Rescuer

She would be the most important helper he had outside of his family and medical team.  But Sherma had no warning of this on the first morning of her first job since before her children were born.*  She was to be the administrative assistant in a strange new home business. 

When she walked in, she greeted her new boss and his wife and met a gaunt, bald, 11-year-old boy under treatment for cancer.  The boy's bedroom was directly across the hallway from the office. His parents had a medical practice in addition to his father's new consulting business; they were going to the practice office that day.

 Before she walked out the door, his mother handed Sherma a syringe loaded with orange liquid.**  "Please give this to Tommy at 2 o'clock."  The weight in the pit of her stomach lightened somewhat when she realized it was not an injection, but a drink.  But still, she was left alone in a large house with a pile of her boss's chicken scratch to type up, a dog, a puppy, a cat, and a very sick child.  It was a strange beginning, but there she dropped her anchor.

For the next two years, the boy would be on chemotherapy.  He was in the house much of the time, sometimes with a parent or two, but sometimes with no one but Sherma to care for him.  In the mornings, upon arrival, she would always sit in the breakfast room with the boy, and they would play gin rummy and talk.  Then she would get to her regular work.  Sometimes the boy would build his models in the basement; sometimes he would come up and paint his D&D figures on the floor next to where she sat.  At other times, the boy would be in his bed across the hall, vomiting.  Sherma was there then, too.

After the boy finished his chemotherapy, she continued to work for this quirky business and to take care of these eccentric people with her steadfast love and graceful competence.  For years, she was the only employee. She sat at a desk that faced and abutted the desk where his father sat.

Then one day, over 25 years later, a little tremor heralded the onset of Parkinson's Disease.  She had to retire as she gradually began to freeze into a statue of herself.

Sherma was dearly beloved by her family, and they kept her at home as long as they could, though her last three years were spent in a nursing home.  But to that boy, she will always be the kind, strong, dignified woman who had helped carry him and his family through those terrible years and beyond.

I didn't visit her enough after she retired.***



*She actually had one prior job after her children were born and before this one.  However, it was so unpleasant that she resigned so quickly, no one counts it.  It is remarkable that she stayed with this home business long enough to become accustomed to and even to love its eccentricities.  My guess is she was stuck the very first hour, because Sherma could never leave a child who was in such need.

**This was a 'leukovorin rescue.'  Leukovorin is a highly concentrated form of folate that is used to reverse the toxic effects of methotrexate chemotherapy after it has had time to attack the tumor but before it has had time to kill the patient.

***I was the boy, of course.

 Portrait of Sherma Summers at the World Trade Center, acrylic on linen (2016) by Suzanne Summers LaPierre, based on photo (1980s) by Robert Summers (two of Sherma's three children, all loving and talented).